by Quintino Johnson

Created on: July 22, 2008

WESTERN CULTURE CONDEMNS THE TREATMENT OF WOMEN IN ISLAM AS SECOND CLASS CITIZENS?

The woman is subservient to the man in all cultures and societies throughout historical documentation. Great civilizations and empires such as Egypt, Greece, Rome, Britain, Zulu, France, Russia, Ottoman, China, and America all place the woman second to the man. Why? Religious doctrine, egotism, and tradition are the chief causes of male domination over the female in human society. In addition there is an undercurrent in the capitalistic society that has always had the policy of "divide and rule", on grounds of race or gender, to more successfully exploit the working class. Western culture, the capitalistic society, is slowly acknowledging the equal rights of women, and using that acknowledgement or maturation to condemn cultures and religious practices that by western standards do not provide women the basic rights. One such denounced religious practice is Islam. Such action requires an assessment of the treatment of women in western culture, the capitalistic society, from the eighteenth and nineteenth century and a glance at women today.

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

During the eighteenth century, married women's lives revolved around managing the household. A role that included partnership in running farms or home businesses. The defiance of English rule and the onset of the war for independence disrupted the usual patterns of life in many ways including impacting how women responded to events surrounding them. While the essential role of most women continued to be managing all aspects of their households, women took on political overtones.

Women who traveled with the army were known as camp followers and did so for many reasons: inability to provide for themselves at home; fear of attack; eviction by troops; desire to be with husbands; the attraction of a paying job and rations, or as prostitutes selling to the army. Well over 20,000 women followed one army or another and transformed camps into small towns. In some ways, women were an important element because they carried out tasks such as laundering and nursing (both of which were paid) which men were unwilling to do and without which the army would have been even more seriously depleted by disease. In addition, women performed duties as cooks, food foragers, spies, and water carriers (all unpaid).

The Revolution was accompanied by dramatic changes in the lives of women. After the Revolution, American women, for the first time, protested

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